No movie franchise has genericized the high-concept plot dynamics and pop culture jokiness of post-Pixar American style animation as much as the Despicable Me series. It’s why the Minions, those yellow, oblong, goggle-sporting sidekicks have become an offshoot franchise in their own right: They so perfectly embody the juvenile mindset that connects so readily to a certain audience sensibility that has proven to be more universal than we would like to admit. The third Minions feature—and the seventh in the overall Despicable Me universe—has been lauded as a vast improvement over the first two, which were characterized as merely a series of childish sight gags attached willy-nilly to skeletal plots. Actually, that pretty much describes this movie also. The difference, apparently, is that the plot flatters our affection for and knowledge of classic Hollywood films, and by “us” I mean viewers who are critics or pretend to be.

It helps that the movie’s scope is nominally ambitious. It opens with a short history over millennia of the Minions tribe, whose age-old quest has been to find an evil entity—a “big boss”—to serve. Amidst the montage of slapstick battles and encounters with savage civilizations we are introduced to James and Henry, two Minions who possess a more creative mojo than their compatriots, whose interests rarely transcend fart humor. As the centuries roll up to the 20th, J&H manifest a taste for visual art that places them front and center when the yellow horde encounters its first silent film set. Accidentally setting themselves up as stars after becoming involved in a filmed runaway train sequence, they eventually decide to serve not a villain but rather the German-accented expat director Max (Christoph Waltz). From here the film adheres more closely to the Minions storyline credo, meaning episodic comic sketches based on well-known base material, in this case famous movies from the studio era, like Modern Times and Citizen Kane. However, once James and Henry decide to make their own movies they hit on sci-fi and creature features, the latter of which allows them to actually call forth a real monster from who-knows-where, a goofy blob called Goomi (Trey Parker) who proves to be a real terror. Predictable action-movie mayhem follows.

At no point does any of these disparate narratives gel into anything organic, but the use of cinematic cliches is at least fresher than the aforementioned fart humor, which is ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. Minions are gonna Minion, so don’t expect anything out of the ordinary. 

In Japanese subtitled and dubbed versions. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Minions & Monsters home page in Japanese

photo (c) Illumination Entertainment and Universal Studios